Research-Apr-29-2007
From Common Energy UVic
This page is the minutes for the Research team on April 23, 2007.
Present: (Dan Pollock, Emily Keller, Jamie Biggar, Naomi Devine, Andrew Bateman)
Meeting start: 4:45, B028
Agenda:
- Complete draft of the Going Beyond Climate-Neutral Progress Report - April 2007 and distribute it to the Reviewers
Question: How do we turn the progress reports into a BCN plan?
- Dan: better not to say reviewed in part - important to have a reviewer for each section; Naomi also feels we can find a reviewer for each section
- Who do we have lined up? Denver Nixon (CRD), Kara Shaw, Christie Simpson, another professor - have been asked to review the entire document - we have not specifically asked people to review a particular section
- What sections f
Contents |
[edit] Timeline for Progress Report Release
- Jamie: Timeline may be too aggressive
- Dan: press releases often need two weeks in advance- better to line up reviewers before we set a release date
- Naomi - June 3-9th Environment Week - better leverage to get media coverage if we released it on the Thursday of this week and we can announce it at the lectures before this week.
- Jamie - and then we could do a lot of build up to release of progress report
- We will need to clearly communicate this change of date to the group as many are thinking it is May 17th.
- Get progress report back from reviewers on May 17th
- Jamie - benefits of getting out to reviewers - can think of it as a way to 'harvest' a bunch of ideas and suggestions to form basis of creating the plan
- Dan - editors can make factual changes and change meaning by mistake through mis-interpretation or initial ambiguity - this is why we need time to get the report back to groups for final reading before release
- map out timeline
[edit] Working Group Structure and how that reflects itself int he final document
- overseeing project based research in the summer (next week)
- curricula (next week)
- Andrew - working group structure is out of date and obsolete - cross-over areas and developing things that are outside the working group structure - we should be striving for things that strive within the structure - we are we constraining ourselves with working groups when we have so many things that are cross pollinating - should not reinforce the working groups for the final report
- Jamie - more project based - there are not that many areas that overlap (a few: ie. climate trust)
- working groups in their current form may not be best, but they have become organizational hubs that will be important to maintain
- Naomi - we should keep working group structures - besides the benefit of having them be a hub, they could also decide the structure they need to carry out their work - could
- Dan and Andrew - working groups do not really exist anymore - meetings have been happening, but wiki not being updated - structure is changing - much of current work is being done outside of working groups (ie lecture series, research that is being done) we will increasingly see that things are constrained by trying to fit them into current working groups - what we have is a series of projects beginning
- identify important projects and people who want to work on them - especially because we have overlap between the working groups in terms of people
- Jamie - unsure of what the counter proposal to this is - is this not what we decided already? Are working groups not already creating projects -
- Naomi - to just let working groups go and dissolve them could be disorienting for those people who have focussed on groups that fall particularly within a working group
Andrew - 1) being able to organize final plan into sections and projects within them; 2) the 6 sections that we have come up with now do not really work/fit - it would be nice to step back and see if there is a more natural structure of organizing to go forward with?
- Dan - by allowing the projects to drift a bit rather than be tied with a certain group will be beneficial and allow them to evolve - by giving people specific projects
- Andrew - in some circumstances we are having to enforce working groups structure - ie keeping on top of the working groups coordinators/communicators/writers - seems more natural to have people involved in projects - reorganize hubs around people who are already involved in projects rather than around enforced working groups.
- Naomi - what if a working group still does want to be a working group...some working groups will be able to carry on in their current form if projects fit within them well - better to give working groups power to decide
- Dan - some bad habits have developed in working group structures - not currently existing in the form we claim they are - we are often insisting that we have certain structures when in reality it is not how it is done. We need to foster other strucutres as well and allow for flexibility and encourage groups to form around projects and create some sort of strucutre to provide guidance for that - right now, if a team of people want to do a project, it is not clear how they should go about this and who to report back to besides the current working group
- Jamie - agree that it needs to be clear how a project is developed within the plan - agree we need a better way, something that is accountable, clear who is responsible for a project - differentiate between things like the University Challenge and the projects developed in plan
- if we make it clear that the working groups are no longer the necessary hubs and they can organize into project groups that can then report to research team - ie. who is responsible for a project and who/where they can go for support
- Dan - what happens if it turns out that we have a slightly different 6 sections by the end of the summer - Naomi feels we need to maintain these sections, Dan feels that we should have a flexible enough structure to allow for these 6 sections to evolve.
- Jamie - projects can be launched by working groups, and then working groups can continue to meet collectively if they wish to do so.
- Naomi - important not to lose original 6 sections - we need to have continuity from original format and final draft - we need to acknowledge in final report that these are still the basis, but may have created overlaps and new projects that are outside these - just need to account for this, but do need to maintain these 6 as basis. If it turns out that sections have changed, explain how this has happened and process of re-organization -
- Jamie - important to include in the plan that this is how we got to where we are - we need a way to guide readers through document ie topical chapters - do the chapters need to reflect the 6 sections - no, need continuity but do need to show how we got new organization
- Dan - feels that final chapters in BCN Plan do not need to be organized around original 6 sections - natural to have 6 problem areas and six potentially different solution areas (ie. 'Education' could form a chapter heading, although it is not one of original sections) -
- Jamie - include chapter that explains process of how we got there - lends credence
- Dan - have two self-contained documents that are published together - 1) one that explains the Process of where we came from and where we are going 2) one that describes the projects and final plan to BCN
-this can also give us double media coverage
-make this the core topic of next week's meeting
- some working group structures still work - these are the ones that have projects that fall neatly within their boundaries (Dan)
- how research team takes on coordination role for projects coming from working groups
- need working groups to finish progress report, and while doing this have working groups to identify what projects ought to be
- projects have to come out of progress report
- easy transition - sections become the projects
- conversation from yesterday regarding definition of projects - ie. writing a strategy within a section can be counted as a project
- projects will make it much more accessible for new recruits
[edit] Additional Comments
- Dan - editing wiki important - must be done before public launch - the amount of work this will take will rival the amount of time that is needed to finish progress report
Meeting ended:
[edit] DECISIONS MADE
- BCN Plan Release - timeline too aggressive - working groups - finalize draft this week - given to reviewers at end of week - May 17th draft back from reviewers; release Earth Week (June 3-9th) Update from Coordination-May-1-2007 - Looking to have release on May 31st
- Jamie will communicate the discussion on working group structure - may stagger this communication this until after some of the progress report stuff
- Weekly Email - create a weekly email page - then if someone does not read the weekly email that is sent out, they can look it up and this can also help track action
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